Emergence. The dance of connection.
Complex systems resist simple explanations. They resist the demand for the One True Story that makes all others false. They have many stories, all with some degree of truth in them. Once you know that, complex systems become much less frustrating and much more delightful.
A delightful aspect of complex systems is that they have emergent properties. Emergent properties are those features that come from interaction of components rather than properties of the components themselves. Features and abilities you will never see if you look at just one component of the system. You can look at a single bird all day, and never see the properties of a flock. A flock can split and swirl around a tree, then merge whole again and fly on. Something no individual bird can do.
Emergent properties, like the underlying complex systems, resist a one line description. Life, consciousness, free will are all emergent properties of complex systems. And famously resistant to one line description. As I see it, emergent properties lie in the dance of interactions between the components of a system, not in the properties of the components alone.
A dance of interaction is immaterial, but vital to generating the features of a complex system. A living system is a good example. This immaterial but vital aspect has long been noted, often under using words like soul or spirit. I believe that trying to imagine a complex living system as a mechanical simple system is futile. Complexity and its consequences are a vital feature, not an annoying bug, in the design of our Universe.
Complex systems, in my vocabulary, are ones with feedback loops. It is those dynamic connections that power the dance of relationships. Properties, features, abilities emerge from the relationships, not purely from the components. Even is rigid and predictable systems, there is some truth to that story. A table and a chair can be built from the same pieces of wood, its the relationships between them that make the difference. At a component level a cathedral is just a heap of stones. It is the relationships between the stones that make the grandeur and delight.
I’m a bit allergic to the word “just”. When someone refers to a brain as just a bunch of neurons, or a cathedral as just a heap of stones, I think they have lost the plot. They are demanding a simple Universe that isn’t the one I live in. We have created much powerful engineering by reducing systems to their components and finding rules that define simple interactions. But, like any good idea, such reductionism can be over applied.
The Universe may well, in principle, run on a simple set of rules. But that does not imply that the emergent properties that result from the complex interactions are predictable and obvious. At least not to us. Perhaps some super intelligent AI will see patterns in some systems that are too complex for us to grasp. Till then, we can enjoy rather than dismiss the complexity around us. And enjoy the vibrant properties that emerge from that dance of connection.